cover photos

[Conor]

Sounds like the movies you get the home page for do not have an IMDb number. In these case the link would not be correct. You can verify that a movie has an IMDb number both in the edit window under the extras tab (by default) or by displaying the IMDb number column. Sorting by that column is a quick way to determine which movies still need the number.

[noribori]

I added Max Manus to my movies, and clicking the link showed the right page in MoviePosterDB.

My first thought was that the movie was missing in MoviePosterDB, in that case MoviePosterDB shows different results, often a movie you had selected before or the home page.

[MikeB]

How strange that you got the correct link and I did not!

My point (I guess it was not clear enough) is that when DVDpedia searches for a film on IMDB and finds it, isn't the ID number then known? (I looked up 'Max Manus' on IMDB, for example, and got this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1029235/). If IMDB knows the ID number (such as in this example), why isn't the number included in the Movie Poster link?

Perhaps there is a preference that I have missed? Is 'ASIN' something needed? (What is it?) That is not checked.

[noribori]

I haven't activated showing ASIN, whatever it is.
Since you activated showing IMDb, you should see "IMDb = 1029235". If not, something went wrong with storing that data.
If you see it, then the link should work too. Maybe a simple time-out issue. Try again.

[MikeB]

Using Conor's suggestions, I displayed the IMDB number in the column view and found that, for some reason, almost 200 films had no number. Using the 'get advanced info', DVDpedia is now downloading that information. That should have me sorted, but I don't understand why almost one third of the films did not download or store the number originally.

[sjk]

I signed up to the IMP Awards forums in order to do a search, but still need to be approved. But giving the site a quick looks I think it does not have an API.

Thanks for checking. That site's been more reliable for me than http://www.movieposterdb.com, which is currently suffering from PHP errors.

[MikeB]

That site's been more reliable for me than http://www.movieposterdb.com, which is currently suffering from PHP errors.

That's quite strange to read. I have been using that site for several years and have so far received no PHP errors, it works very well for me. Perhaps you should try a different browser.

[MikeB]

Since I discovered that one of my libraries (about 100 films) had no IMDB ID, I used the 'download advanced info' to get the numbers. Using these numbers to download posters, I discovered that over 30 percent of the numbers were incorrect. Is this a problem with IMDB or DvdPedia?

[Nora]

Use the little gear button in the Edit window instead of the 'Get Advanced info' batch option. That way, if there is more than one result returned from IMDb (as is sometimes the case with sequels or very common titles), you can choose the correct one from the little drawer in the edit window.
Using the 'Get Advanced info' batch download will always add the first result automatically.

[MikeB]

Use the little gear button in the Edit window instead of the 'Get Advanced info' batch option. That way, if there is more than one result returned from IMDb (as is sometimes the case with sequels or very common titles), you can choose the correct one from the little drawer in the edit window.
Using the 'Get Advanced info' batch download will always add the first result automatically.

Thanks for the reply, but I was only trying to add the IMDB ID number to the films. I had already downloaded the film information, but, for some reason, the ID number did not come. Is there a more reliable way of getting the ID number?

[Nora]

So even when you use the gear button for those entries, the IMDb number is not downloaded? Could you give me the titles of a few of those entries that didn't download the IMDb number? Thanks.

[Conor]

The ID number should have been part of the original download. If in the future you find that you add a movie directly from IMDb and it's missing the number let us know which movie and as much details as possible.

Since the number was not present in those movies, there is no exact match that DVDpedia can do, so it relies on the title and release year to try to get the best match, of course this is not always correct, especially for common titles. For the movies where the guess was wrong be sure to remove the ID number before using the gear button as it will otherwise think it has a perfect match and present you with no choices.

[MikeB]

Until now, I have not needed an IMDB ID number so I had not selected it in preferences. I don't know if that causes DVDpedia to not download it.

I was quite suprised by the high number of errors because I believed that it would search for both title and release year (or some other piece of information that had already been downloaded). I can recall one example: for the film 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' it download the ID for 'Bloody Sunday.' The two films were made, I believe, about 30 years apart.

[Conor]

Having a field off in the preference will indeed mean that the information does not get added. If you would like to have but not display it, you can turn it off from the info view but leave it in the add/edit panel.

[MikeB]

Having a field off in the preference will indeed mean that the information does not get added. If you would like to have but not display it, you can turn it off from the info view but leave it in the add/edit panel.

Thanks for the suggestion, however, unfortunately, if you turn it off in the info view, the movie poster plugin no longer works. So, it must be on in both.

I wanted to complete the second library and found a ridiculous error: 'Desire' (1936) had the ID number for 'Basic Instinct' (1992). And if you want another example of how bad the IMDB cover art is, try 'Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie' (1972).